If you are using a smartphone (iOS or Android),I’m sure you are aware of push notifications sent by your installed apps. Web-push notifications are similar to smartphone push notifications where your subscribers will be notified when a new post is published or when you manually send a push notification.

PushEngage is an awesome service that allows you to send these push notifications.

In this tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to enable push notifications for your WordPress blog.

You should open your WordPress blog’s admin panel and follow along with this tutorial. Within 5 minutes, your WordPress blog will be web-push notification enabled.

How to Get more subscribers & traffic with browser Push Notifications

At this moment, this service supports the Chrome browser on all platforms (mobile & desktop) and the Safari browser on Mac OS. In the future, we can expect it to support other browsers like Firefox.

The setup part is quick and easy. So let’s get started with this step-by-step guide.

Thefree account allows you to send unlimited push messages per month for 2,500 subscribers, which is a decent number for a small and medium-sized blog.

Once you have signed up for an account, you need to add your blog’s name and add your blog’s logo. This is useful for the branding of your push notifications.

Go to Plugins > Add New and search for “PushEngage”. Install and activate the plugin. <Link of the plugin>

Upon activation of the plugin, click on PushEngage > Dashboard. To activate the plugin you need to get the API Key from your PushEngage account. I have marked the points in the below image that will help you create the API Key.

Once you are done activating the plugin, now you need to configure the subscription settings.

This is where you will configure the prompt that users will see to subscribe to your push updates. I use “Single Step Optin” for ShoutMeLoud & I suggest the same for you. “Safari Style Box” is another popular method.

Once you are done and logged in, you will see a dashboard like the one below (in the screenshot). It will show you the stats of existing subscribed users and other details.

You can click on the “Send A Notification” tab to send a custom push message anytime.

GCM Settings

This value is pretty crucial & you really should create your GCM account.

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A blog scientist by the mind and a passionate blogger by heart ❤️. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud (Award winning blog), speaker at various international forums.
Life motto: Live while you can! Teach & inspire while you could & Smile while you have the teeth.

Great write up on push notifications. I’ve actually been considering adding it to my blog. I just recently upgraded from HTTP to HTTPS.

Since you’ve started using these notifications, have you noticed a decrease in your email subscribers? I’ve just started growing my subscribers and think that I would benefit more from having people opt into my email list.

Although I can see how this would be beneficial for getting people back to your site. I’ve visited your blog a few times now. (first time commenting)

I always seem to get a new push notification that talks about a new blog post on your site. Definitely has me curious as to whether or not this has affected your email opt-in rates.

Really there are great benefits of enabling push notifications.
I am using OneSignal and it is totally free.
I have 3000+13000 push notification subscribers in my 2 blogs. It helps me to reach my contents instantly to my readers.

Although i used the guide for GCM SETTINGS it doesn’t show me the active subscribers. I used the Firebase console to get GCM Project Key and GCM Project Key. I copy paste these and try to verify the GCM Settings but i get this message “Sorry But our Server is not authorised to use this API KEY ,If you want to know how to register for a GCM Key, please refer to our blog post here”
What I am doing wrong? Can you help me?

Hi harsh,
You are the inspiration for me. I am new in this field and don’t know anything about it, that’s why I try to follow you. One of the best site I ever found for WordPress tutorial.
Thanks for this help.

After reading this post I installed Pushengage on my site and within 15 days, I got 67 subscribers. But today as soon as I updates this plugin, my site was down. After calling customer care of bulehost india, they deactivate all plugin and told me to activate one by one. But Pushengage show ‘Fatel error’ which activating this plugin and they said me to install other plugin.

Hi! Harsh
I have been using the free version of Pushcrew on my website Blogmantra, but sadly it is only for desktop notifications. I need to upgrade in order to have mobile notifications.
Does the free version of Pushengage cover for mobile notifications too ?
I

Hey Harsh,
Thank you for this detailed tutorial. I have tried some plugin but it didnt seem to work. I have recently started blogging. Infact I have written 3 posts so far. I write whenever I get free time. This is new experience for me and your website was recommended to me by a friend.
Free account with 2500 subscribers seems decent. I will give it a try and see if it works for me 😛
Thanks